Pages

July 19, 2016

[KOREA TRIP 2016] Arriving to Seoul & Homestay Family

Today I'm finally officially starting to tell you guys about trip to Seoul, South Korea. As you might already know - I spent there 2½ weeks in May with Krisse from Rise and SPARKLE. Continue reading more after the cut if you're curious to find out how we arrived to Seoul and where we stayed for the first 5 nights ^^

Our flight departed from Helsinki-Vantaa Airport at 5.30PM on May 6th (Finland time) and we arrived to Incheon International Airport around 8AM on May 7th (Korea Time). The flight was about 9 hours long and we flied via Finnair. It was my first time flying that long and far from Finland ! During the flight I watched few movies and tried to get some sleep. The cabin crew was really nice and helpful :)

After we landed we went to get our bags and queued for about an hour at the immigration. That was something totally new to me LOL ! I've traveled so little I've never had to do that before. After we got through the immigration we had to take an airport subway to move to another part at the airport. That also was something that isn't in Finland ! Helsinki-Vantaa Airport suddenly felt so small compared to Incheon International Airport.

After that we went to find a convenience store at the airport so we could get our T-Money Cards. It's a public transportation card that can be used in subways and buses. After that we had super delicious & healthy smoothies and updated social medias with the free airport wifi :D Then we started to head towards Bucheon - that's where our homestay house was located.

It took us about 3 hours and 3 different subway lines to get from Incheon Airport to Bucheon. First we took the Airport Railroad line and went from Incheon to Gyeyang where we switched to the Incheon 1 line and got off at Bupyeong-gu Office. From there we switched to Line 7 and got off at our destination at Kkachiul in Bucheon.

I've barely used a subway in Finland and Seoul subway system felt so difficult and complicated at first. After few days it was super easy to use. I recommend you to download an app called Subway Korea - it's free and easy to use. You can choose the language in English which is awesome !

Our homestay house looked like this ! It's called Wonderful Korea Homestay and it's located in Bucheon, near the Kkachiul station. The family was really helpful and nice. The father, mother and girls spoke pretty good English. The grandmother also spoke some basic English. When we arrived the grandma was the only one at home. With her limited English and our limited basic Korean we were able to understand each other.

We understood her saying that the girls were at school and the parents were hiking and that we should leave our luggage downstairs - apparently it's mans job to carry them ! I wanted to change my clothes etc. so I ended up carrying my own luggage with the help of the grandma.

Below you can see the room where we stayed at. It's so adorable ;W; We shared the bathroom with two Japanese exchange students who were staying at the room next to ours. The rooms were connected with the bathroom in between. I wish we had talked more with them. They seemed to be busy students hahah ~

As soon as we arrived we just went to sleep at 12PM or so. After all - in Finland it was 4AM or so and I woke up at 10AM Finland time. I had been awake almost 24 hours straight at this point as I didn't really get to sleep on the plane. We were so jet-lagged that we immediately slept for 4-6 hours.

I can't ! Krisse took a sneaky photo of me sleeping :'Dd She wondered how I'm able to breathe when I sleep like this... I wonder that myself too but I'm still alive ! I sleep like that always :)

After we woke up we headed to the convenience store at the Kkachiul station with the help of the girls of the family. We bought some water and triangle kimbaps to eat. After that we parted with the girls as we were heading towards the annual Yeondeunghoe Lotus Lantern Festival which I'll be writing about on my next post - so keep your eyes open ;)

The area was really nice and cozy. Not to mention the air was much cleaner compared to Gangnam or Hongdae. From the air and feel I got from the area it felt like we were still in Finland... :) There were quite many churches here and there and we saw lots of students with their school uniforms going to school. It felt like a peaceful area and seemed like it was mainly targeted for families and elder people.

On our last day at the homestay - the family wanted to feed us with some tteokbokki (떡볶이) and samgyeopsal (삼겹살) with rice and wrapped in lettuce. And that way eaten it's called ssam (쌈). It was sooo good ! What a nice way to end our stay at their house :)

No comments
:

Post a Comment

WHO AM I?

Hello! I'm Jenna and I'm from Finland. This blog is mainly about cosmetics and I post product reviews, hauls & unboxings. Occasionally I post about my life and Asian music + dramas as well. I hope you enjoy your stay on my blog :) ♥